How do I set up my board?
Walk through the guided setup wizard — board basics, seats, invitations, committees, and governing documents — and re-run it any time.
How does the setup wizard work?
Right after you create your board, BoardTools walks you through a short, guided setup with five steps. Nothing here is one-shot: you can skip any step for now, leave partway through, and pick up exactly where you left off — from your dashboard's setup checklist (visible to admins and the chair, the roles that can finish setup) or from Settings → Board profile → Open setup walkthrough (shown to those same two roles, for the same reason).
Each step has one obvious way to commit it: Save & continue (or Save & finish on the last step) saves whatever you've entered on that step and moves you to the next one. Save & exit does the same, then takes you back to your dashboard. Skip for now is different on purpose — it moves on without saving anything you've typed into that step, so use it when you'd rather come back to a step later with a clean slate.
1. Board basics
Set your board's name, logo, and primary color, the timezone your meetings are scheduled in, the month your fiscal or term year starts, your board's default meeting length (it prefills the end time whenever a meeting is scheduled, so no meeting is ever created without one), and your board's default quorum and voting rules. These become the sensible defaults every new meeting and motion inherits — you can always change them later, either back in this step or from Board settings & branding.
The logo is a link to an image you host, so it gets a live preview under the field: if the preview says the image didn't load, fix the URL before saving — it needs to be reachable by your members without signing in. (A logo that doesn't load is never a broken icon in the app; your board's name shows as the wordmark instead.)
2. Positions & seats
Lay out the seats on your board — chair, treasurer, directors, and so on — each with a term length and, optionally, a term limit. Your board already has one: a Board Chair position, with you seated on it, created along with the board. Pick a common board shape from a template to pre-fill a starting set (applying a template never removes or duplicates a seat you already have), then add, edit, or reorder from there. Seats are what members get assigned to, and what drives who's up for renewal later — see Roles vs. positions for how seats differ from a member's role.
3. Invite members
Bring your board's people in. Each invitation reserves a seat, so a seat with limited capacity can only be filled by as many invitations (accepted or still pending) as it has room for. You can resend or revoke a pending invitation any time. See Members & roles for the full invitation flow.
4. Committees (optional)
Define a committee, assign members to it, and designate a chair. Most boards do their detailed work here — skip this for now if your board doesn't need committees yet.
5. Governing documents (optional)
Upload your bylaws, charter, and key policies — marking a document "governing" lets you track its versions and ask members to acknowledge it (see Documents for the library, and Members & roles for the acknowledgment checklist). The file picker takes the same files as the library — PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, text, CSV, or images, up to 25 MB — and flags a file that's too big before you submit. While you're at it, you can put your board's first meeting on the calendar; both halves of this step are optional.
Does the checklist know about work I did outside the wizard?
Yes. The dashboard's Finish setting up your board checklist — and the progress bar inside the wizard — tick each step off from your board's real data, not just from what you did in the wizard:
| Step | Counts as done when… |
|---|---|
| Board basics | your board has a name and a time zone other than the default (UTC) |
| Positions & seats | a seat beyond the starting Board Chair position is defined |
| Invite members | the board has more than one current member |
| Committees | at least one committee exists |
| Governing documents | a governing document is uploaded, or a meeting is scheduled |
A step you finished or skipped in the wizard still counts, even if the data changes later. So a board that added its members, seats, and bylaws from the Members and Documents pages is never told "0 of 5 steps done".
The checklist disappears on its own once every step is done or skipped — or once all but one are and your board is more than 30 days old. You can also dismiss it for yourself at any time.
Where do these settings live afterward?
Everything from step 1, plus quick-motion presets for the meeting cockpit, lives permanently on your Settings page — see Board settings & branding for the full picture. Nothing the wizard sets is locked in; change any of it any time.